Central Asia

On April 11, I reported on the EU Troika-Central Asian summit held in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. The post and most media outlets focused on energy relations and human rights issues between the EU representatives and all of the CA leaders present. It was reported that during the summit there was talk of a growing relationship between the EU and specific CA states (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) regarding energy supply and diversification, but my conclusion and others’ held out little hope of any real progress on this issue.

However, new reports suggest that EU-Turkmenistan energy cooperation may be making significant progress with an agreement to supply gas to Europe through the Nabucco and Trans-Caspian Pipelines. In interviews with the high EU representatives at the Summit, Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel, EU Special Representative for Central Asia Pierre Morel, EU External Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, ‘signs of germination’ were expressed concerning closer energy relations.

When asked whether there had been any progress in Bilateral and Multilateral meetings concerning the Nabucco and Trans-Caspian pipelines Kouchner stated; “Yes, there is certainly some hope. The president [Turkmen’s Berdymukhammedov] has decided to furnish Europe, and of course France, with gas.”

EU External Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner more bluntly and confidently stated that an official Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was agreed upon with Ashgabat; “We have already signed MoU with Kazakhstan. We are signing MoU with Turkmenistan soon; we have finalized the negotiations. We would now also be ready to enter into dialogue to see all the options with energy with Uzbekistan.”

Now, nothing has become official yet, and there is much more that needs to be accomplished and sorted out before one can say that the EU-CA (Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan) have a formal energy-supply relations that largely exclude Russian influence and territory. There is the issue of exactly how the pipeline will run geographically to its end point in Austria and beyond; Turkey would need to be on board and appeased, and the issue of using Iranian territory still seems like a non-starter. Dimitrij Rupel, Slovenian foreign minister and head of the EU external relations council asserted; “No, the EU at the moment doesn’t have any substantial engagement plans with Iran.”

Stephan Blank, an excellent scholar on CA/Russian energy relations, will be given a voice about this EU-CA energy cooperation on this site in the next few days.

Additionally, when this EU Troika-CA Summit was originally held there was much said about how the EU would promote democracy and human rights in the region and how this would affect negotiations over other matters, such as energy policy. Here is an article summing up the Human Rights Watch’s demands/recommendations for the EU in their talks with each CA state, and here’s a list HRW’s reports on CA human rights’ issues.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 10:35 am and is filed under Uncategorized, Blogroll, Foreign Policy Association, Turkmenistan, Central Asia General, Central Asia Newsroom, Economy, Central Asia Beat, Foreign Policy Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.